KEY POINTS:
One in four junior doctors has fallen asleep while driving home from work while two-thirds have made mistakes at work because of tiredness, according to a study.
The survey into fatigue levels among young doctors was done by scientists at the Sleep/Wake Research Centre at Massey University in Wellington.
Nearly 1400 doctors responded to the survey, which calculated a "sleepiness score" for each person.
The doctors were twice as likely as the general population to score as excessively sleepy, the researchers said. The higher a person's sleepiness score, the more likely they were to report making mistakes or falling asleep at the wheel.
One in five respondents said they had done the latter at least five times since becoming a doctor.
Medical Association deputy chairman Don Simmers said efforts had been made in recent years to reduce the number of hours worked by young doctors and ensure they were given adequate breaks.
But Massey researcher Philippa Gander said the study suggested other factors were more important in fatigue. "Night shifts and unscheduled changes to rosters were more consistently linked to sleepiness and errors than the total number of hours worked," Dr Gander said.
Dr Simmers said a lot of progress had been made in ensuring doctors got enough rest and supervision but the study, if it was accurate, showed there was still a long way to go.
However, it was impossible to achieve a perfect scenario, he said.
"We are always going to have to have doctors on duty at night, medical emergencies will always occur in the middle of the night and we have to provide a service for those situations."
It was unacceptable to the medical profession to have some doctors permanently assigned to night shifts, so it would always be necessary to have staff switching from day work to night work, which could cause fatigue.
Dr Simmers said he was surprised by the survey results, in light of the "very significant changes" in recent years to the way young doctors worked.
However the weekly average was still more than 40 hours, he said, with some doctors working 60 to 70 hours a week.
- NZPA
